Recently, Interclypse, Inc., attended the MongoDC 2013 conference - an annual appearance of the open-source, no-SQL community surrounding 10Gen's product, MongoDB. The conference was hosted at the very-cool Newseum in downtown Washington DC. What can I say about Mongo...what can't I say about Mongo!? If you are in the data management arena and you haven't played with MongoDB or any other no-SQL solution yet, what are you waiting for?
The Conference
First, about the conference: I attended only the general event (just to set the context). Obviously, there were a range of presentations, but these were the ones that I found to stand out:
1. Max Schireson's (the CEO of 10Gen) discussion on aggregation and indexing was excellent. First of all, the CEO gave it! Outstanding! The CEO is a technical guy with plenty of database experience - both structured and unstructured. Max was able to demonstrate new features of the MongoDB product that really make it a disruptive force in the data management /analysis market. Chief among these is the ability to aggregate documents given different criteria. This would be like constructing a view or a join. In addition, to producing new aggregate documents at query time was the ability to chain this creation to other mutations, such as sums and sorts. For example, let's assume the following JSON documents in the same collection:
{"_id: "1",
"org" : "JUG",
"state":"MD",
"size":"200"}

This is equivalent to the SQL statement:
SELECT org, SUM(membership) as totalMembership FROM collection
GROUP by org
WHERE org is "JUG";

{"_id: "JUG",
"totalMembership": 2221}

...where the results are grouped and sorted. As you can see, the aggregate is a reduced set despite the fact that one of the documents having slightly different structure. The "." notation acts as a "|" or pipe function, similar to that found in UNIX shells, allowing for the chaining of operations.

Finally, Max covered index construction and optimization, how not to index everything, and finally how to profile your queries through the "explain plan" to understand what indices’, if any, are being used during your queries and when.
2. Rob Moore's presentation on tricks-to-teach MongoDB showcased potential depth with the product. Imagine MongoDB acting as a pub-sub message broker! Building upon his asynchronous (and super-fast) Mongos client, he was able to demonstrate callback functionality within Mongo so that modification events to a document or collection were passed back to subscribed mongos clients much a JMS broker would do so. Although this is not part of the supported product, it did entice us to dream of certain possibilities.
3. Auto-Sharding and matters of scale. The sharding capability of MongoDB makes it attractive and a viable alternative to some big data solutions! Now, with MongoDB 2.4 release, the pain of shard management has gotten easier with automated shard extension support. So, as my Mongo cluster grows and I need to add more members to my shard collections, I "simply" startup a new MongoDB server instance and add it as a member of my shard collection. The distribution of key space across the new member is handled incrementally during normal shard collection rebalancing. Of course, if you didn't know, MongoDB also has a mapReduce implementation using JavaScript. Before you bash it, consider the performance of mapReduce across a shard collection filtered by time where all the working documents are in memory - yep, that's how MongoDB rolls. MapReduce, given your use case and tuning, can plow through documents faster than you would expect. (Sorry for the caveats, but that's life, right?)
There were other topics discussed, of course - spatial querying, security, a RedHat OpenShift highlight, and others. One thing new I did do that day was connect to the mongodb IRC on FreeNode through a Chrome add-in and help someone with their document "_id" (the shard key) strategy. Yeah old-school collaboration!

Movement to QSFP and XFP show density in the datacenter on the rise! 10/100 Gbps are making inroads, particularly within the rack and across the datacenter. Long range 40Gbps is 4 trunked 10 Ge links, either MO4 fiber or extended range out to 3000 Meters - that’s 1.86 miles. QSFP (Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable) allows 2x 10Ge fiber connections (fiber count of 4) connections in a single plug switch-side with a split tail host-side. That is 1 cable for 2x 10Ge drops from host to switch. That just cut a typical cabling load in the rack in 1/2. Choose QSFP in copper for even more affordable cabling! Did someone say 10Gbps over copper? Boy, the photons must be getting scared. For another reference, see: http://www.datcominc.com/file_library/spec/97_QSFP.htm or Google QSFP.

Now to the storage scene...Twinax is yet another copper alternative to more expensive fiber. Typical uses for Twinax are FCoE (Fiber Channel over Ethernet) where the runs are generally short (not exceeding 300m) and are therefore used mostly in a ToR (Top of Rack) configuration. Twinax, however, may be proprietary. Twinax cables come in both active and passive modes, depending on your network and attached storage solution. Here’s a brief overview of some of the nuences around twinax: http://brasstacksblog.typepad.com/brass-tacks/2010/12/should-i-use-optical-fiber-or-twinax-cable.html

Interclypse opens our office every Monday evening from 8pm till midnight for information technology working sessions. Anyone is welcome to participate in these session as they are an informal gathering of individuals working on various technology projects ranging from open source projects to training modules. If you have an interest in a specific technology than feel free to contact our organizer Brian Walsh (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) to see if anyone else is working on a related topic or if we have some recommended training material. Otherwise, feel free to show-up, introduce yourself and share the enjoyment of technology with us.

Yesterday, I got a new laptop - an Asus ZenBook - ultra light and fast (with a keyboard! Novel idea - the iPad was not very convenient for lots of typing and business stuff). As cool as a mini-laptop with an SSD drive and a boot time of 2 seconds is, it still is just a tool. This reminds me of a graduating student's thesis talk I heard this last May on how technology "Moves us Sideways." Advancements in technology do do things - they elighten interpretation of a future, they empower potential for optimizations in work done today. Advancements may also let us spin in circles and lead us astray - these are the parodies of the da y. Never-the-less, continuing to advance, is to continue to learn. What moves us sideways is advancement without a purpose or meaning. Although, not all-together bad, advancements are not necessarily all-together good, either. What's the point of this? Well, take my laptop. What am I going to do with it to make the investment worthwhile? Why did I want a smaller device? At Interclypse, we want to make sure the customer is buying with intent and that they know to a certain degree what they can get out of their investment - and to that end - that they are buying what they need for their business - not just what is latest-and-greatest or the secular, en-vogue tech. Of course, there is sometime the need to stay relevant, or "with the age." Blackberry?

It seems that often "what works best" for one solution turns into "this works" for all solutions and then somehow into a mandate to "only use this" for all solutions.
On my previous program, I was able to use technology at will for the purpose of meeting the customer's needs. I wanted to keep higher development velocity, however, so I did limit the tech stack in production. What resulted were a series of AOAs (Analysis of Alternatives) for hard problems, mitigating the problem through a down-selection of various solutions to a short-list of acceptable alternatives. We did this repeatedly. Starting in 2008, we wound our way through Hadoop, Spring Integration, Servicemix, Camel, Active MQ, 0MQ, TibcoEMS, RabbitMQ, F5 BigIP, Voldemort, ExtremeDB, BerkleyDB, MySQL, Terracotta, MongoDB, Askaban, CouchDB, Sandra, Gemfire, Solr, Scala, etc. Phew! For example, in the arena of data analytics, we presented map reduce techniques on MongoDB and Hadoop using JAQL. A customer database evaluator worked on the team at that time. Later we now hear that Mongo and Mysql, among other things, are on the list... Maybe we influenced the evaluation?
Generally speaking, we should "use the right tool for the right job." At the same time, I constrained certain technology choices - the use of Java, the use of Spring, assertion of certain conventions, how software was constructed, tested, etc. You could say, I asserted a certain level of IT governance.
As I mentioned at the top, we performed different AOAs. Some of the products chosen were commercial ones. The final decisions to use or not use certain products definitely have to do with money, but cost is not the only factor. At the end of the day, product selection is a mix of community support, O&M costs in the out-years, quality of he product, importance of the product to the company portfolio, or in the case of FOSS or GOTS, what the followership and popularity trends appear to be. ACCUMULO is an example of an agency taking ownership of the code as it is a fork of Google's BigTable. In this case, O&M costs are an internal investment projection - nothing is for free.
In a funny way, the current licensing pain exists because IT governance is somewhat working - Project x need a DB and the customer used to mandate a commercial RDBMS solution. Well, now we have a need for "IT efficiency." IT Efficiency drives firstly at the consolidation of hardware. Both the data cloud and the utility cloud (VMWare and the like) start to make sence on a consolodated hardware platform, but what about the data?
The shift to Mongo, MySQL, Hadoop and ACCUMULO still does not deal with IT Efficiencies around data schema consolidation. I wonder how many duplicated solutions will exist out there on our consolodated data cloud? Perhaps the next, great IT Governance adventure?

In the case when a system is inoperable or hung and needs to be rebooted you can use the Magic Sysrq key sequence from the system console. The only downside of this is that it must be activated before it can be accessed. To activate sysrq run the following command and add kernel.sysrq = 1 to /etc/sysctl.conf.

# sysctl -w kernel.sysrq=0

Now you can force a reboot using Sysrq:

NOTE: The Sysrq key is the Prt Scr key

Hit alt-sysrq-s. This will attempt to sync your mounted file systems so that changes to files get flushed to disk. You may hear or see disk activity. If you are looking at the console, the system should print the devices which were flushed.

A few seconds later, hit alt-Sysrq-u. This will attempt to remount all your mounted file systems as read-only. You may hear or see disk activity. If you are looking at the console, the system should print the devices which were remounted.

I recently came across a project that stated they were following an agile methodology, specifically Scrum; however they had not delivered any usable software since the projects inception (over 18 months). In addition, they required a detailed specification prior to the start of development. The specification took over 6 months to produce by a separate team and required several review approval meetings before approval was given to begin development. Are they really following an Scrum? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

What is Scrum?

Scrum is the most popular agile methodology in use today. It was first introduced by Dr. Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber in 1995 at OOPSLA. According to the Agile Alliance, Scrum is an agile, lightweight process that can be used to manage and control software and product development using iterative, incremental practices. Scrum, when used properly, significantly increases productivity and reduces time to market while facilitating adaptive, empirical systems development.

Scrum adheres to the values as defined in the Agile Manifesto: “Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

Twelve principles underlie the Agile Manifesto, including:

Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software

Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)

Working software is the principal measure of progress

Even late changes in requirements are welcome

Close, daily cooperation between businesspeople and developers

Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location)

Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted

Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design

Simplicity

Self-organizing teams

Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

Scrum practices:

Three basic roles: Product Owner, ScrumMaster, and Project Team

Product Backlog

Sprint Backlog

Sprint Planning Meeting

Daily Scrum Meeting

Thirty-day iterations, delivering increments of potentially shippable functionality at the end of each iteration

Retrospectives

Simple questions to determine if you are following Scrum; if you answer no to any of the below then you are not adhering to Scrum.

Flashing a computers BIOS is a task most have little experience in doing. Although, the steps outlined here are quite simple one must still be cautious so that your computer is not left in an unusable state. This article focuses on the basic steps and explains why it is necessary to flash the BIOS, precautions, and how to recover in case of a bad flash.

What is the BIOS and why do you need to flash it?

BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System. It is the most basic component in your computer and determines what your computer can do without accessing any other files or programs from the hard drive. The BIOS contains all the information needed for your computer to Power on Self Test (POST), which is needed in order for the computer to boot. The BIOS also includes how to control your keyboard, communicate with your CPU, send/receive video signals to/from your monitor, and recognize your components (hard drives, optical drives, USB devices, serial ports).

Why should we flash the BIOS?

Flashing your BIOS to the latest release is crucial because it enhances your system's capabilities, helps it to detect newer devices and components (newer hard drivers, newer CPUs, etc), and improves stability through the introduction of patches by the manufacturer.

Steps

Make sure you have a USB stick. Since the original method to flash the BIOS was using a 1.44MB floppy USB size is not important - they are all greater than 1.44MB

Download the BIOS version appropriate for your motherboard.

NOTE: BE SURE TO READ THE DOCUMENTATION TO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE PICKED THE CORRECT VERSION.

Run the HP USB Disk Storage Utility software. NOTE: With Microsoft Vista you need to start the software as an administrator by right clicking on the icon and selecting "Run as Administrator".

Select your USB as the “Device”, FAT as the “File system”, BOOTDISK as the “Volume label”, select “Quick Format”, Select “Create a DOS startup disk”, and enter C:\win98boot (or the path where you downloaded the DOS bootable files. Then select the “Start” button. This process only takes a few seconds.

(Optional) Check the USB stick; there should be 3 files installed on it: command.com, io.sys and msdos.sys. If you do not see them you may have to unhide them by selecting Tools->Folder Options->View unselect the ”Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)”.

Next copy the exploded BIOS upgrade files you already downloaded to the USB stick

You are now ready to flash

Reboot your system and enter BIOS setup (usually by selecting the F2 key during initial boot)

Move to the Boot tab

Change your USB stick to be the first on the list

Save and exist the BIOS setup

A reboot will occur; this time booting from your USB stick

Once booted you will be left at a DOS prompt

Change directory to where the updated BIOS files were saved

Execute the program (typically you just type "flash" at the prompt) as indicated in the BIOS flash update documentation

Remove the USN stick

Reboot the system

Precautions

Flashing the BIOS can be dangerous if the flashing process isn't finished successfully or if the newly flashed file doesn't match your system or is incorrect

Never flash if there is possibility of losing electricity

Before proceeding to flash don't forget to go into your BIOS and write down all of your settings. This is crucial because the "default" settings may not be the best option for your system, especially if you've tweaked BIOS